A Medical Device Daily
East Alabama Medical Center (Opelika, Alabama), a regional referral center serving a five-county market area, reported a partnership with WebVMC (Atlanta), developer of a system enabling virtual medical care technology for remote disease management.
Working with the patient's physician, Home Care of East Alabama Medical Center designs a care program tailored to the patient's needs. The patient's family and caregivers also help set goals and plan care criteria.
RemoteNurse, WebVMC's system that will monitor the vital signs of Home Care of East Alabama Medical Center patients, is the conduit to keep patients and care team members connected 24/7. RemoteNurse immediately alerts members of the care team if changes in a patient's status are identified, so that appropriate intervention can occur before complications develop.
Carol Murphey, director of Home Care of East Alabama Medical Center, said, “Our selection process for a telehealth services provider was very involved. We chose WebVMC because their system is web-based and had features no other company could offer, such as instant messaging for real-time communication between patients, physicians and caregivers.”
She added, “We anticipate WebVMC's technology will take us to the next level in promoting patient compliance and better healthcare outcomes that will keep our patients at home and out of the hospital.”
Bill Behnke, executive vice president of marketing and sales at WebVMC, said, “WebVMC helps prevent unneeded emergency room visits or hospitalizations by providing the continuity of care and safety net to support patients in their recovery or the management of their illnesses once they leave the hospital.”
Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina), reported new agreements for operating room accessories, instrument protection and patient positioning with five contracted suppliers, three of which are small business enterprises.
Contracted suppliers include DeRoyal Industries (Powell, Tennessee); Medical Action Industries (Hauppauge, New York); Tyco Healthcare Group /Kendall Co. (Mansfield, Massachusetts); White Star Medical (San Antonio); andXodus Medical (New Kensington, Pennsylvania).
The 36-month agreement, effective Aug. 1, is available to both the acute-care and continuum-of-care markets.
Purchasing Partners is the largest unit of Premier, a healthcare alliance owned by more than 200 not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare systems. These organizations operate or are affiliated with more than 1,500 hospitals and more than 41,000 other healthcare sites.
Affiliated Computer Services (Dallas), a provider of business process outsourcing and information technology solutions, said it has signed a one-year, $3.7 million contract extension with the State of Colorado's Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing to continue supporting the state's Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) program.
The Colorado CHP+ program provides healthcare services for children through 18 years of age in families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. More than 40,000 children are currently enrolled in the program.
This agreement is an additional one-year extension to the contract that was originally awarded to ACS in 2003, to support enrollment of uninsured children into this program. ACS will continue to provide multilingual call center services to providers and members who need information about the application and eligibility processes. ACS also will continue to process CHP+ applications, determine eligibility, collect premium payments, manage complaints and appeals, handle correspondence and administer the program's web site.
ACS is focused on state healthcare program administration, offering a full spectrum of systems and complementary services through an integrated solution. It supports more than 20 million program recipients and processes nearly 475 million Medicaid healthcare claims annually, representing more than $47 billion in provider payments.
ACS serves 30 programs in 25 states and the District of Columbia.